Transportation

THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION IN TIOGA COUNTY (Taken from the Tioga County Community Needs Assessment 2020)

"There has been a loss of public transit in Tioga County since 2014. Ride Tioga, which provided fixed-route public transit and dial-a-ride paratransit services, ceased operations on November 30, 2014. Ride Tioga operated for about 20 years in Tioga County and added a few connections into Broome County. It was funded with Federal Transit Administration and New York State Department of Transportation transit funds, as well as Medicaid transportation reimbursements, so the service was at almost no cost to Tioga County.

During 2013, New York State contracted with Medical Answering Services (MAS) to schedule all Medicaid transportation statewide. MAS assigned most patients to taxi service instead of the bus. Ride Tioga ridership, which had been rising annually, went from about 1,000 per month to zero in early 2014. Other rural transit providers in New York suffered the same results.

The cease in operations of Ride Tioga happened suddenly and left a significant gap in Tioga County transportation services, not only to Medicaid patients, but to those non-Medicaid riders who used the fixed-route and paratransit services to get to work, medical appointments, food shopping, and more." Local nonprofit groups and volunteers have done what they can to fill in the gap, primarily offering services for medical transport."